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Bacchus

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Posts posted by Bacchus

  2. Swans in trouble today

    in General Boating

    Posted

    Never been exposed to tripe (with the caveat that I once watched daytime TV...) but dripping is wonderful stuff. My dear ol' mum (a yorkshire lass) would save the beef dripping in ramekin with the best/gelatinous bits in the bottom and the fat on the top. Modern equivalent - get some quality butcher's bacon, cook it in a non-stick pan with no added fat, and then fry a slice of bread in the fat that comes off; manna.

     

    Back on topic... I have noticed a few swans around the Staines area behaving oddly. There is a slipway near me where they congregate (because idiots feed them there), and a couple of days ago I noticed that some of the ('orrible) things had wandered out towards the main road and were just sitting on the verge looking disdainfully at passing traffic. One down my lane doing the same. They almost looked drugged.

  4. New member with new project

    in New to Boating?

    Posted · Edited by Bacchus

    11 hours ago, MtB said:

     

    Swerving off at a tangent, it may not. 

     

    I never get notifications formatted like that. I occasionally see them in threads (@MtB) but they never arrive anywhere I'd notice them. Are they supposed to come as an email? Or a PM? Or what?

     

     

     

     

    11 hours ago, buccaneer66 said:

    it usually seems to work

     

     

    Mine all go to a spam filter on my email server... I haven't checked the address registered on here, but they go to a filter separate from my normal addresses. I was looking at something on the server a month or so ago and found hundreds of 'em

     

     

    ETA - just checked my account - it is a valid address, but not one that is currently linked to my Outlook client so I don't get the emails... the software is working perfectly

     

  5. New member with new project

    in New to Boating?

    Posted

    If you precede their name with an "@" the forum software will recognise it and alert them that you have mentioned it like this -- @Gautier

     

    When you have been here a certain length of time (not sure what but you can look it up in the rules), you can send a private message (hover the mouse over their user-name and click "message" in the subsequent pop-up)

     

    If they give their location, you can go there and walk about shouting, but this might get you arrested at best.

     

    the starter of this thread hasn't been on the forum for seven years, so you might have trouble there

  7. Trip up the Thames this summer, where's good?

    in Holidays Afloat

    Posted

    7 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

     

    I am surprised it is as much as that.   If the river is 100m wide and 2m deep, that would represent a speed of about 1ft per second.    Up here in Abingdon there is no perceptible flow at all.  Last winter the maximum flow was  about 2ft per second.

     

    It might be lower - I just googled "current flow thames staines" and got that result. Of course I don't see the same bloomin' thing now to screenshot, but links to the NFRA website which suggest that it goes down to about 10-15 cumecs in August. I would say your cross section is about right (slightly narrower and deeper where I am, but 200m2 sounds reasonable), that would give a flow of 5-7.5 cm/s

     

    I expect I will be in it at the weekend - I shall try to time myself drifting past the boat (c:

     

    would still only take about a minute to fill the lock completely, and is still only an interruption to flow rather than an extraction whether the user is going up or downstream.

  8. Trip up the Thames this summer, where's good?

    in Holidays Afloat

    Posted

    I find the talk of locking restrictions on the Thames somewhat disingenuous.

     

    My local lock - Penton Hook - which is quite a biggy, takes roughly 750 cubic metres to fill. The flow at Staines is currently 65.8 cubic metres/second, so it would take less than 12 seconds of flow to fill the lock completely (compared to a fill time of 10-15 minutes); but -- here's the thing... when you open the downstream sluice, the water goes back into the river. How would restricting lock use affect flow? It isn't like a canal where each  fill moves water from the top to the bottom.

     

     

  10. Thames mooring question

    in New to Boating?

    Posted

    22 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

     but it's not very onerous IIRC and amount for each pole hammered into the river bed and another for 'being there'.

     

    The EA are quite heplful and friendly if approached in a sensible manner (!)

     

     

    I think the accommodation licences for things like poles banged into the river are a bit on the steep side - I know someone who has to pay about twelve hundred quid a year for two, and someone else who has to pay about eight hundred because he built a pontoon which overhangs the river by about eighteen inches tapering to zero

     

    EA are skint. They grab every penny they can, but, yes, they can be very helpful. Just don't let them smell a wallet with any cash in it...

  13. Mooring on River Thames - reality?

    in Moorings & Marinas

    Posted

    30 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

    one narrow boat and it is nearly full.

     

     

    The Thames isn't 100% ideal for narrow-boats, this being one of the main reasons. Many moorings are aimed at providing a facility for half a dozen cruisers but can be completely taken by one or two narrow-boats.

     

    There isn't much of a culture of rafting on the inland waterways, and in any case I think most small cruisers would see rafting next to a 70' narrow-boat a bit like tying on to a train and having no clue how to get ashore even if they did.

  14. Continuous short term mooring around Osney, Oxford

    in Living Afloat

    Posted

    The Thames is beautiful, lovely, one of the most beautiful places on Earth IMHO, but in winter it can be completely uninhabitable and extremely dangerous in any craft, let alone a 15' cruiser. As it happens @Hugh Dictyostelium, I did try to do something very similar - I studied for my PGCE at Oxford Uni and decided I would take my little Shetland 535 (a relatively massive 17') up to Port Meadow to stay on during the week. I think I made it to November before taking digs...

     

    Beautiful pontoon moorings outside a Staines pub in summer

     

    image.png.47a1a860c475a4d707da988da779f1c2.png

     

     

    Not so inviting in winter (to be fair this was the infamous 2014 flood, but there is absolutely nothing to say that it won't happen again!)

     

    image.png.b3f8e7fe8b17d1c4831ba4e2e4fec622.png

     

     

    • Greenie 1

  19. Looking to become liveaboards: Thoughts and Experiences

    in Living Afloat

    Posted

    55 minutes ago, Bod said:

    Too cheap, raise the price by £10,000 add a couple of different photos, showing ducks or cygnets. 

     

    Bod

     

    LoL - you might be right. Or paint over the beautiful teak ceiling with "London white" and call it a live-aboard?

     

    150 more views and seven more watchers since yesterday morning. Still no enquiries; nothing. Not even "wot's yorr lowest price mate?"

  21. Looking to become liveaboards: Thoughts and Experiences

    in Living Afloat

    Posted

    The market for cruisers has certainly peaked. I was thinking of selling my boat for various reasons this year; two brokers have told me that they didn't want the business, and that "larger" boats (it's 36') weren't selling so I popped an a up on the Duck - two enquiries in two months. Risked the eBay nutters - in ten days over 1400 views, 35 watchers, not a single enquiry.

     

    (And, no, it isn't up for "a strong price to take advantage of the current market", it's up at the same price it was three years ago when it needed painting and got a lot more interest, and compares favourably with all similar vessels.)

  25. Historic Boats for sale online

    in History & Heritage

    Posted

    1 hour ago, magnetman said:

    It does say "all aluminium" but there seems to be a lot of wood around. If the gunnels and cabin are indeed aluminium it's quite interesting. Had assumed wooden cabin but maybe not.

     

     

    The superstructure is predominantly aluminium. I have been in touch with the seller and seen a couple of photos of the boat before her first(?) resto...

     

    Would certainly raise an eyebrow or two at the Henley Trad Boat Rally...

     

     

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